House advances TikTok bill

A House committee just moved a bill that would make TikTok illegal to distribute in the United States unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells control. That does not delete the app overnight, but it puts app stores and internet hosts on the hook if the ownership structure stays the same. (congress.gov) The basic idea is simple: Congress is targeting ownership, not dance videos. The bill says a “foreign adversary controlled application” cannot be distributed, maintained, or updated in the United States, and it names TikTok and ByteDance directly. (congress.gov) That matters because TikTok is not a small niche app. A Congressional Research Service report says TikTok told courts in December 2024 that it had 170 million United States users, which is roughly half the country. (congress.gov) Washington has been circling this app for years. President Donald Trump tried in August 2020 to block transactions with ByteDance and force a sale, and President Joe Biden later rescinded those executive orders while keeping the national-security review alive. (congress.gov) Congress then escalated from executive pressure to statute. The House passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on March 13, 2024, and President Biden signed the broader package containing it into law on April 24, 2024. (congress.gov) (time.com) The argument from lawmakers is not mainly that teenagers are watching too many short videos. The Congressional Research Service says the fight centers on whether ByteDance could be compelled under Chinese law to hand over data or shape what millions of Americans see in TikTok’s recommendation feed. (congress.gov 1) (congress.gov 2) TikTok has spent years trying to answer that with a technical workaround called Project Texas. The company’s plan was to store protected United States user data on Oracle servers and wall it off from ByteDance, but Congress kept moving toward a sale-or-ban model instead of accepting a security promise. (congress.gov) A forced sale sounds neat on paper and messy in real life. The law gave ByteDance months, not years, to divest, and lawmakers themselves have noted that a deal involving one of the world’s biggest social platforms could be worth tens of billions of dollars and would face Chinese government approval. (whyy.org) (congress.gov) TikTok and ByteDance have also been fighting in court. A Congressional Research Service legal analysis says the companies argued the law violates the First Amendment, the ban on bills of attainder, and the Fifth Amendment’s protections for property and due process. (congress.gov) So this committee vote is one step in a much longer chain. Congress is still treating TikTok less like a normal social app and more like a strategic asset tied to a geopolitical rival, and every new vote keeps the pressure on one question: can ByteDance keep the algorithm and still keep the American market. (congress.gov 1) (congress.gov 2)